Gore Vidal

Son of Eugene Vidal and Nina Gore, a high-class couple, Eugenio Lutero Vidal Jr. was born on October 3, 1925 at the famous West Point Academy, where his father worked as an aeronautical professor. After his parents separated, he was placed in the custody of his grandfather, Thomas P. Gore, a charismatic individual who had been a Democratic senator from Oklahoma.

Fascinated by the figure of his grandfather, who had gone blind, he adopted his last name as his first name. He lived with him in Washington DC, where the boy regularly read aloud to him and served as his guide. In this way, Gore Vidal came into contact from a very young age with the circles of power. The old man’s sharpness, critical of US foreign policy, had an enormous influence on his granddaughter, who soon wanted to follow in his footsteps into politics. “From a very young age, he wanted to become president of the United States,” Gore Vidal declared. Gore Vidal was also closely associated with the John F. Kennedy administration, as his mother had joined Hugh Auchincloss, Jacqueline Kennedy’s stepfather.

She debuted as a novelist at the age of 21 with “Williwaw”, although her controversial work “The City and the Pillar of Salt”, dedicated to her lover, JT, a soldier who died in the battle of Iwo Jima, had a greater impact. He was also the author of other novels, such as “Juliano”, “Myra Breckinridge”, “Myron”, “Creation”, “The Judgment of Paris”, “Live from Cólgota” and “The Golden Age”. He also had great relevance as an essayist with titles such as “United States (1952-1992)”, for which he won the National Book Award, and which had a sequel titled “The Last Empire”.

The production company MGM hired Gore Vidal as a screenwriter in 1956. He made his big screen debut with The Catered Affair , with Bette Davis and Ernest Borgnine , directed by Richard Brooks . Shortly after, William Wyler required him for the adaptation of Ben-Hur (1959) , based on the novel by Lew Wallace . An early script by Karl Tunberg was ready, but Wyler had Gore Vidal and Christopher Fry make alterations. Neither of them came to appear in the credits, as the Writers Guild gave sole authorship to Tunberg.

They say that the always provocative Vidal wanted to give a homosexual twist to the famous film. Thus, he rewrote the sequence in which Ben-Hur meets his old friend Mesala again, after years away, hinting in a veiled way that the latter had been attracted to the other in his youth, which would lead to the rejection ending up with him. hating him to death. Vidal spent his entire life claiming that the sequence was shot exactly as he wrote it. But there was some controversy, since Charlton Heston was very unhappy with the possible gay connotations of the film. The actor denied that Vidal had significant contributions to the film, while William Wyler corroborated Heston’s version.

Vidal also worked with Tennessee Williams on the adaptation of the latter’s play Suddenly Last Summer , he collaborated on the adapted screenplay for Is Paris Burning? and participated in the writing of the controversial Caligula , by Tinto Brass . On the other hand, the writer came to make a cameo in Rome , by Federico Fellini .

Gore Vidal became a candidate for Congress for the New York Democratic Party in 1960. He lost by a narrow margin. In the early 1980s, he ran for the same party in the California Senate primaries, but was not chosen as a candidate. At the beginning of the 21st century, Gore Vidal was highly critical of the Bush administration for its foreign policy, which he described as expansionist.